Star Symbols and Star Emojis to Copy and Paste

How to Copy and Paste Stars with This Tool

Click any star and it’s copied: paste it wherever you want with Ctrl + V on Windows, Command + V on a Mac or by long-pressing a text field on your phone. Every click also adds the symbol to the “Your selection” tray, so you can build a row like ★ ✦ ★, a decorated signature or a divider and copy the whole thing with one button.

Looking for a specific star? Type what you see or what you need in the search box: “four pointed”, “outline”, “half”, “circle”, “shooting” or “asterisk”. The filters split the tool into its five groups (emojis, five-pointed stars, 4 to 16-pointed stars, asterisks and sparkles, and combos), so you don’t have to scroll through the whole page.

When you copy a symbol, its card shows the Unicode code point, the HTML code and the CSS value, which come in handy if the star is going into a website, an email template or a spreadsheet. And if you want to rate something, the rating generator instantly builds strings like ★★★★☆ or, with a half star, ★★★★⯪, out of 5 or out of 10 and in four different styles.

Everything runs in your browser: it’s free, with no sign-up and nothing to install. Stars are copied as Unicode text, not as images, which is why you can paste them into WhatsApp, Instagram, Word, Excel, an email or a gamer tag. If you see an empty box instead of a star somewhere, the symbol isn’t broken: that app uses a font that doesn’t include it. Try a more common star such as ★ or ☆, which almost every font supports. It’s more likely to happen with the half star ⯪, which only reached Unicode in 2018, on older phones and computers.

Star Emoji vs. Star Symbol: What’s the Difference?

They copy the same way, but they don’t behave the same way. The star emoji ⭐ (U+2B50) is a color image: every vendor draws its own version, so it doesn’t look exactly the same on an iPhone, a Samsung phone or a Windows computer. The star symbol ★ (U+2605) is a typographic character, just like a letter: it takes the color, size and style of the text around it.

When to Use the Star Emoji ⭐

The emoji grabs more attention and carries emotion. It works well in messages, social media posts, comments and casual email subject lines, where you want it to stand out. The downside is that you can’t change its color, and in a formal document or a carefully designed website it often clashes with the rest of the design.

When to Use the Text Star ★

The text star looks better in documents, résumés, lists, slides and web design, because it follows the typography and can match your brand color. It’s also the safest choice for ratings: five ★ or ☆ always take up the same width and read the same on any device.

One technical detail explains some odd behavior: several symbols, such as ✴ or ✳, exist both as text and as emoji. The invisible character U+FE0F requests the emoji version, in color, and U+FE0E requests the text version. That’s why the same symbol can show up in color on one phone and in black on another, depending on the system and the app.

4, 5, 6, 8 and 12-Pointed Stars: Which One to Use

The number of points changes the message a lot. A classic five-pointed star doesn’t say the same thing as a four-pointed sparkle or a twelve-pointed star that looks like the sun.

Five-Pointed Star ★ ☆

This is the star: the one used for ratings, favorites and plenty of flags. Unicode offers the filled version ★, the outline ☆, the half stars ⯪ ⯫ ⯨ ⯩ and many variants: stress outlined ✩, circled ✪, pinwheel ✯, shadowed ✰ or small ones like ⭑ and ⭒. The pentagram ⛤, drawn in a single stroke, also has five points, but its use is symbolic and very different.

Four-Pointed Star ✦ ✧

Four-pointed stars look like a twinkle or a sparkle. They’re a favorite for dividers, Instagram bios and minimalist designs, because they’re light and pair well with almost any font.

Six-Pointed Star ✶ ✡

The six-pointed black star ✶ is decorative. The Star of David ✡, made of two interlaced triangles, is the symbol of Judaism, so it’s best used only when that’s the meaning you want.

Eight, Twelve and Sixteen-Pointed Stars

Eight-pointed stars (✴ ✵ ✷ ✸) recall a compass rose or an intense twinkle; the twelve-pointed star ✹ looks like a sun and the sixteen-pointed one ✺ is almost a burst. They all belong to Unicode’s Dingbats block, which runs from U+2700 to U+27BF and which you can browse in the official Unicode Dingbats chart.

What Do the Star Emojis Mean?

Star emojis aren’t interchangeable. These are their most common uses, based on their official Unicode names and how people use them in messages and on social media:

• ⭐ Star: excellence, success, something that stands out or a good review. It’s also used to mark favorites.
• Glowing star: the version with rays, for something that shines brighter than usual or someone who did a great job.
• ✨ Sparkles: excitement, magic, something new or freshly cleaned. Wrapping a word in sparkles adds emphasis, sometimes ironically.
• Dizzy: its official name is “dizzy symbol”, like in cartoons, although today it’s also used as a decorative sparkle.
• Shooting star: making a wish, wishing someone luck or talking about something that goes by very fast.
• Star-struck face: excitement, admiration or being amazed by someone or something.

The final meaning always depends on context and on who’s writing. A ⭐ from your boss on a report is praise; three ✨ in a post can be pure sarcasm. When in doubt, the text star ★ is more neutral than any emoji.

For every other emoji (faces, hearts, gestures or flags), you’ll find them in our emojis to copy and paste tool, with search and skin tones.

Star Symbol Codes for Websites: HTML, CSS and Unicode

If you work on a website, an HTML email or a stylesheet, you don’t need to paste the symbol: you can write it with its code and it will look the same in any modern browser.

Star Symbol in HTML

In HTML, the black star ★ is written ★ or with the named entity ★, and the white star ☆ with ☆ or ☆. The ⭐ emoji and the half star ⯪ have no named entity: they’re written ⭐ and ⯪. The named entities ★ and ☆ come from HTML5; if your editor or email template is older, use the numeric code, which always works.

In CSS, to place a star before some text with a pseudo-element, use content: "\2605";. It’s a clean way to create star bullets or rating icons without loading images, and the star inherits whatever color you set in the stylesheet.

A common issue on WordPress sites: some emojis show up as “????”. The emoji isn’t the problem; the database is. The stars ★, ☆ and ⭐ take 3 bytes in UTF-8 and cause no trouble, but emojis such as the glowing star or the shooting star take 4 bytes, and a MySQL database set to utf8 instead of utf8mb4 can’t store them. It’s one of the technical details worth checking in any web design project.

Star Ratings: How to Write Them Properly

Star strings are the fastest way to rate something in text: ★★★★☆ needs no explanation in any language. To make them easy to read, follow three simple rules.

• Always use the same pair: filled and outline in the same style (★ and ☆, or ✦ and ✧). Mixing ⭐ with ☆ works, but the emoji usually looks bigger and throws the row off. The half star ⯪ pairs with ★ and ☆.
• Show the empty ones: ★★★ could be 3 out of 3 or 3 out of 5; ★★★☆☆ leaves no doubt.
• Add the number: a screen reader may read “black star” five times or skip the symbols altogether, so “★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)” is clearer and more accessible.

The generator on this page builds the row instantly: pick the score, whether the scale is 5 or 10 and the style, then copy it with one click. With the ★ ☆ style, the score moves in half-star steps (more on that in the next section); with the others, one star at a time. Use it for blog reviews, product pages, internal surveys, reports or messages.

A common mix-up: the yellow stars you see under some Google results don’t come from typing ★★★★★ in the title. Google shows them based on review structured data (Review or AggregateRating), as explained in its review snippet documentation, and only for the content types it supports. Setting that up correctly is part of SEO work.

Half Star Symbol to Copy and Paste for 4.5-Star Ratings

When a score isn’t a whole number, like 4.5 or 3.5 out of 5, you need a half star. Unicode has included one since version 11, released in 2018: ⯪ is the “star with left half black” (U+2BEA), and placed after the filled stars, ★★★★⯪ reads as four and a half stars. In this tool it sits in the five-pointed stars group, right after ★ and ☆, ready to copy in one click.

The rating generator adds it for you. With the ★ ☆ style, the slider moves in half-star steps and its label shows the score, such as “4.5 / 5”. The 10-point scale works the same way: 7.5 gives you ★★★★★★★⯪☆☆. With the ⭐ ☆, ✦ ✧ and ✪ ✩ styles it moves one star at a time, because there’s no half star in those designs.

The Four Half Star Characters in Unicode

• ⯪ Star with left half black (U+2BEA): the most common one, used for ratings like 4.5 out of 5.
• ⯫ Star with right half black (U+2BEB): the same star with the fill on the other side.
• ⯨ Left half black star (U+2BE8): only the left half, with no outline for the rest.
• ⯩ Right half black star (U+2BE9): only the right half.

None of them has a named HTML entity. On a website, ⯪ is written ⯪, and in CSS, content: "\2BEA";.

Half Star Emoji: A Text Symbol, Not an Emoji

People often search for a “half star emoji”, but there’s no half star in the emoji set. ⯪ is a text symbol: it takes the color of the text instead of showing up yellow like ⭐. That’s why it pairs better with ★ and ☆ than with the emoji: in a row like ⭐⭐⭐⭐⯪, the emoji is bigger and in color, and the half star looks out of place. If you need something that displays everywhere, the fraction is another option: ★★★★½.

4.5 Out of 5 Stars: Why to Add the Number

The clearest way to write it is ★★★★⯪ followed by the number: “★★★★⯪ (4.5 out of 5)”. The number helps for two reasons. The half star is a fairly recent character, so older phones and computers, or apps with their own font, may show it as an empty box (the tool warns you about this next to the generator). And a screen reader may read out the name of each symbol or skip them. Before you use it on a product page or in a newsletter, paste it where it will be read and check how it looks.

Half Star Symbol in Word and Excel

It has no key of its own and no Alt code. In Word for Windows, type 2BEA and press Alt + X to turn it into ⯪. In Excel, the UNICHAR(11242) function returns the half star, and the formula =REPT("★",4)&UNICHAR(11242) writes ★★★★⯪ in a cell. On your phone, copy it here and save it as a text shortcut.

Star Symbols for Instagram, Discord and Gamer Tags

Text stars are a common way to decorate a profile. They work in Instagram and TikTok bios, WhatsApp statuses, Discord usernames and the nickname field of many games, because they’re Unicode characters, not images.

Aesthetic Stars and Combos

The aesthetic style mixes small stars, dots and characters from Japanese writing: ⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆, ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* or the shooting star ☆彡, which uses the character 彡 as a trail. In the combos group you’ll find them ready to copy in one piece, and with the selection tray you can create your own by joining several symbols.

Stars in Usernames and Gamer Tags

Each game or social network decides which characters it accepts in a name and how many fit, and sometimes it changes those rules. Before you settle on a username, test it: simple stars like ★, ☆ or ✦ usually work better than long combos or rare symbols, which may show up as boxes on someone else’s phone.

Asterisks, Sparkles and Stars Aren’t the Same

The asterisk * (U+002A) looks like a small star, but it’s a punctuation mark: it points to a footnote, flags a required field in a form or, in math and programming, means multiplication. It’s the only symbol on this page that’s on every keyboard, including the number pad, and on Windows you can also type it with Alt + 42.

Its family includes variants such as the asterisk operator ∗, the low asterisk ⁎, the asterism ⁂ (three asterisks once used to separate parts of a text) and decorative asterisks like ✱ ✲ ✻ ✽. Sparkles such as ❇ or ❈ are more decorative and work well as list bullets or as an accent in a heading.

If you need other typographic signs, such as quotation marks, primes or apostrophes, you’ll find them in our quotation marks and writing symbols to copy.

A Free Tool by DigiAcción, a Digital Marketing Agency in Andorra

This page of star symbols to copy and paste is one of the free tools by DigiAcción, a digital marketing agency in Andorra based in La Massana. It works in your browser, on desktop and mobile, with no sign-up and nothing to install.

At DigiAcción we do web design, online stores, SEO, GEO (AI search optimization), Google Ads and Meta Ads campaigns, video and graphic design. We work with companies in Andorra, Spain and other countries. Free tools like this one solve the small tasks that come up every day when you write, design or post on social media, and we keep them open to anyone who needs them.